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8x8 Business VoIP vs Astound Hosted Voice comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

8x8 Business VoIP
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
8th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
1.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Astound Hosted Voice
Ranking in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP category, the mindshare of 8x8 Business VoIP is 6.8%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Astound Hosted Voice is 5.6%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Astound Hosted Voice5.6%
8x8 Business VoIP6.8%
Other87.6%
Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP
 

Featured Reviews

it_user838506 - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Network Technician II at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
The system makes it easier for emergency events to help spread the word. Though, the mobile app side of things is not the greatest.
District-wide Universal Phone System. We are a very large school district, and it was important to have a "Go To" Phone system. 8x8 was able to meet these goals.  Improved communication. The system makes it easier for emergency events to help spread the word.  The Ring Groups are a great feature…
BF
IT Director at a university with 201-500 employees
Admin features make it easy to customize and change, while Voicemail Transcription is fast and accurate
The most valuable feature is the admin platform that we work with. It allows us a very centralized approach for doing things and it allows us to manage and control everything right from the very top. We could do that before, but the features that we have with RCN seem more extensive than the previous company that we worked with. The Voicemail Transcription is more accurate than what we had with our previous company. Also, and I'm not sure if this is because it's a fiber line, we seem to get the responses and the transcription almost instantaneously, faster than what we had prior. We can do lots of things: We can do call groups, we can do work with our extensions, we can set up our account codes, we can take a look at call logs. There are a multiplicity of miscellaneous settings that are allowed for each user and for the Admin. There's a simplicity to it. It seems they use KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. It works for everybody because, when I'm not here responding to it, my technicians are; sometimes my network guy is; sometimes our students are interacting with it. It creates a very easy flow for working through the product and the interface. The automatic upgrades are the best thing that ever happened, because we don't see them, we don't feel them, we just know that they happened, after the fact. What they've done, at least for us, is that we haven't had or felt a crash whatsoever, nor have we felt the disruption as a result of the updates. That tells me that work goes into them to get them done right, and that they really test the code and test the information in updates so that they work properly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The Ring Groups are a great feature because it allows one main line to ring on several phones."
"They have a very structured system of individuals and teams in place who help with deployment."
"The system makes it easier for emergency events to help spread the word."
"We haven't had to face any disaster recovery... [But as] a smaller company, it's nice to be able to pay for somebody else to take care of that."
"We like the administrative features RCN has available, as it is important that we can balance call loads through programming options and have full control of our messaging, schedules, and other settings."
"This is what's cool about the RCN setup. RCN allows you to go to any web browser, at any time, and configure the phones... Our disaster recovery is: We log in to an RCN website... and we put in a new phone number for the incoming number. If you dial our number, it will actually go to that other number."
"Support is fantastic; I love that it's US-based and within local markets, and I really appreciate calling and speaking to someone I can understand and getting my problem solved."
"We use call recording. It's important to us because there's information that's passed from the customer to us... It's very important that we get the right information and if there's ever a dispute, we've got that recorded phone call to know if we've done something incorrectly or if the customer misordered."
"We've been able to combine three separate operating companies into one phone system, and we're very happy."
"I really like the portal. It makes listening to your messages so much easier as well as changing your voice mail."
"The sidecars on the main phones that we use, the ones that receive the calls, are really important. They help us to distribute calls to people, from reception. That's an important starting point for us."
 

Cons

"The mobile app side of things is not the greatest. Call quality could be better. It is quite the battery killer on your phone."
"In our old system, you just dialed the extension directly, With this system, you have to put a "one" in front of it to trigger it. A lot of clients didn't know that and they'd keep trying to dial the old extension number and would get nowhere... It's been a little confusing."
"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen. You don't get the full view of your desktop. It's more like a five-inch by five-inch view. I think they said the software was designed that way. I don't know if there's going to be a newer version coming out later."
"The analytic part of it, the control panel, those are their biggest areas where they have to improve. There are competitors out there where, when you open the control panel, they have tons of analytics, the ability to add lines, to see which people are on the phone.... RCN has a great product, but they could make it outstanding with the right analytics and control panel."
"The way that you listen to your voicemail messages through the receiver so that you can't fast forward or rewind - I don't like that at all."
"Wireless needs improvement. We have a manufacturing facility and the majority of the managers walk around with 2.4 gigahertz cordless phones and they have to walk, sometimes, throughout three different buildings."
"One area for improvement is the Web Portal. It's not a full-view screen, it's more like a minimized screen."
"Wireless needs improvement... We're still looking for the quintessential IP phone, the one phone that will actually be SIP-enabled and use the WiFi and be able to carry through three [different] buildings."
"I use the voicemail transcription feature on my phone and I think all staff members do. We also have voicemails that we receive from our main number and that can be really confusing. It's something that I've recently had some problems with: The way that these calls are bounced around from line to line before they land in a specific voicemail box that we have to check."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is very fair. They have very good pricing."
"We're okay with the pricing and licensing... It's based on the number of extensions."
"The solution is saving our company money, based on the initial, up-front cost that would normally be required. The monthly ongoing cost is comparable to prior solutions."
"For us, the monthly price was 38 percent lower. We were paying somewhere between $5,600 and $5,800 every month for voice and data. We got it down to about $4,000 with tax."
"RCN, as part of the deal, leased us phones at a reasonable price and each line was extremely reasonable as well."
"Pricing is great. If you're not careful enough, you might just order too many. For the service, the price is right. When you design it, if you mess up and you realize you really need then more lines, the price is negligible."
"It's very affordable. We're very happy with the pricing."
"We felt that pricing was fair because we chose RCN over quotes from several companies. It was reasonable..."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

iCruise.com, Shutterstock, TMW Systems, McDonald's, Allstate Agency, ChenMed, Abode Services, Affiliated Physicians, AHI Corporate Housing, Artco Group, Bank of Cardiff, Bizmatics, DeBoer's, EasyRoommate Vivastreet, Empire Cinemas, H.A.P.P.I., Learn4Life, NetSuite
Citi Open Tournament
Find out what your peers are saying about Sangoma, Yeastar, Astound and others in Hosted and Cloud Based VoIP. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.